There’s little to know so far about Lutalo Jones. The multi-instrumentalist and producer from Minnesota is a cousin by marriage to Big Thief’s Adrianne Lenker, and Robin Pecknold of Fleet Foxes is a fan. With their debut EP, Once Now, Then Again, Lutalo wants to address how today’s world is undermining the future a generation was promised. “They like to say they want change,” they sing on For Now, a song about the predicament faced by Black and Indigenous groups in the US, and yet: “The more that I speak, they stay the same.”
In their own life, this somewhat mysterious musician is forging an alternative way of being, having moved to Vermont with their partner in the hope of creating a more sustainable kind of community. This special EP extends an alluring welcome, crackling like a carefully tended fire. Lutalo’s sound is eminently comforting: acoustic guitar densely layered and enveloping, bobbing alongside subtle electronic touches, amiably puttering percussion and doleful vocals intimate enough to ruffle the finest ear hairs.
First Jones draw you in close, with a lo-fi magnetism similar to the Microphones or indeed Big Thief, then they disturb that fragile sense of comfort with ominous, fragmented lyrics. There’s the man who “watched me through my little black screen” on Call It In, juxtaposed with an image of the artist “taking pictures of my favourite toys”; social stakes change and roles and psyches get twisted; they and a companion “watch the stars gently swim/ one of us bleeding”. The tension creeps into their songs, as subtle as night falling.
Once Now, Then Again is released on 10 June
